US scientists head to Mount Everest for research

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A team of American scientists and researchers flew to the Mount Everest region on Friday to set up a laboratory at the base of the world's highest mountain to study the effects of high altitude on humans.

The team from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota says it plans to monitor nine climbers attempting to scale Everest to learn more about the physiology of humans at high altitudes in order to help patients with heart conditions and other ailments.

"We are interested in some of the parallels between high altitude physiology and heart failure physiology," Dr. Bruce Johnson, who is heading the team, told The Associated Press before leaving Nepal's capital, Katmandu, for the mountain. "What we are doing here will help us with our work that we have been doing in the (Mayo Clinic) laboratory."

Johnson and the eight other team members flew to the airstrip at Lukla, near Everest, on Friday.

It will take them about a week to trek to the Everest base camp, with several porters and yaks helping to carry their 680 kilograms (1,500 pounds) of medical equipment. They will set up their lab at the base camp, which is located at 5,300 meters (17,380 feet), and expect to be at the camp until at least mid-May.

The team says Everest's extreme altitude puts climbers under the same conditions experienced by patients suffering from heart disease.

The team members plan to study the effects of high altitude on the heart, the lungs, muscle loss and sleep during their stay at Everest, which peaks at 8,850 meters (29,035 feet).

Johnson said that the team's laboratory at the Mayo Clinic focuses on lung congestion during heart failure and that lung congestion often kills mountain climbers.

Hundreds of climbers and their guides attempt to climb Everest every year, while thousands more trek up to the base camp. Several of them suffer from high altitude sickness and other complications because of the low level of oxygen.

An experienced Sherpa guide who had scaled Everest at least 10 times died of high altitude sickness Wednesday at the mountain's base camp, becoming the first fatality in this year's spring climbing season.

Hundreds of climbers and their guides are currently camped at the base camp preparing to scale Everest. Climbers generally try to scale the mountain in May, when weather conditions usually improve just enough to enable them to attempt to reach the peak.

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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Discovers Mountain on Asteroid Vesta 'Higher Than Mount Everest' (ContributorNetwork)

NASA's Dawn space craft has taken an image of a mountain on the asteroid Vesta that is higher than Mount Everest, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. It is the latest in spectacular pictures taken by the probe now orbiting the asteroid.

* The mountain, as yet unnamed, is 13 miles high and is surrounded by features that scientists believe were caused by landslides. By contrast Mount Everest is about 5 1/2 miles high.

* Dawn has also imaged a mysterious dark spot on Vesta's equator, about 60 miles wide.

* Dawn was launched from Earth on Sept 27, 2007. It used Mars for a gravity assist in February 2009. It arrived at Vesta in July. It will depart from orbit around Vesta in July 2012 and arrive at Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, in February 2015.

* Dawn used an ion propulsion system to fly to Vesta, a voyage that took nearly four years.

* Dawn's instruments include a framing camera, a visible and infrared spectrometer, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.

* Dawn's primary objective is to gain a better understanding of the origins of the solar system by studying Vesta and then Ceres at close range.

* Dawn is orbiting Vesta at a height of 420 miles, circling the asteroid every 12.3 hours.

* Dawn has completed a series of orbits designed to image Vesta's features straight down. It will now image those same features at an angle. This will aid in the creation of topographical maps of the asteroid as whereas stereo images of individual features. The images are being taken in both visible and infrared light.

* Vesta was discovered by German astronomer and physician Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807.

* Vesta is named after the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth.

* Vesta's orbit around the sun takes 3.63 years.

* Vesta is an irregularly shaped body with an approximant diameter of 530 kilometers.

* Vesta rotates every 5.342 hours.

* Vesta's surface is silicate rock with a nickel-iron core. It is thought not to have accreted a lot of water or may have lost most of its water in the distant past.

* Scientists believe that Vesta suffered a major impact from another body almost its side, creating a crater that reaches deep within its mantle, exposing the material within. This gives Dawn an opportunity to examine that material remotely and perhaps gain some insights into the mantles of other celestial bodies, such as Earth or Mars.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.

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